1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for reducing data errors during the reading back of data recorded on a recording medium.
2. Related Art
As one skilled in the art will appreciate, systems for reducing data errors caused by a misalignment of the read head and the data track, are of great utility. With the variety of recording/reading devices (i.e., computers, tape players and the like) used in so many facets of today's society, the use of such error reducing systems can serve a valuable function in a wide range of contexts. Moreover, as technology advances and data tracks become smaller and smaller, it will become increasingly more difficult to recover data without such data errors occurring. This will be due, in part, to the wandering of the tape with respect to the head, and to the misalignment of the head and data tracks, for example, caused by thermal variations in the tape cartridge and the tape drive. The present invention may be used to reduce the error rate caused by these and other factors, so as to improve the overall performance and efficiency of the tape drive system.
Currently used methods for reducing data errors include the process whereby the read gap is moved over the assumed center of the data track and a read operation, for reading of data, is started. If a data error occurs, the tape is backed up and the data is reread. If the error is still present, then the tape head is moved up or down a few steps and the data is reread again. This process is repeated several times until either the data is reread without errors or a hard error is declared. The disadvantage of this method is that it takes time to back the tape up, move the head up or down, and reread the data, possibly several times to finally recover the data without errors.